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Wednesday update: The City Council passed the item this morning without discussion.

Original Tuesday post: For many years, judges, attorneys, and clerks at Dallas’ muni courthouse have cursed City Hall’s IT department, lamenting its failure to provide a long-promised case-management computer system. With constant budget constraints, along with the city technology director’s departure last year amid a hiring scandal, the case-management system’s replacement plan has languished.

But that’s about to change, if the City Council approves a new $5.2 million computer system on tomorrow’s agenda. The vendor is Tyler Technologies.

The current system at the courthouse is on an antiquated, decades-old mainframe computer. It handles warrants, court schedules, citation processing, cash transactions and various other administrative functions.

The new system will feature, among other things, the potential to transition to a paperless system. No more stacks of folders. It will also allow removal of manual calculations used for receipts and collection, which will be handy to prevent people stealing money.

For years, city auditors have said the current system is too important to be left on the old mainframe. And for years, the city’s technology department has planned to replace it.

City Hall officials complain about wrestling with the system for basic data that would allow them to measure and improve court performance. Judges complain that changing a simple court form to create some efficiency takes something like an act of Congress. The computer system is so old and creaky that technicians are almost afraid to tinker with it.

By the end of next year, we may have a new system that technicians are afraid to tinker with.